


I don’t need the stars to shine (I have faith they’re there)

by IneffableDoll



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ficlet, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Other, Poetic, Stars, Symbolism, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:15:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28098282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableDoll/pseuds/IneffableDoll
Summary: An angel and a demon don’t make a wish on the shooting stars.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	I don’t need the stars to shine (I have faith they’re there)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Love Letter” by Malinda Kathleen Reece. I don’t usually share my ficlets, but I decided to make an exception for this one.

The moon was tucked in shadows.

Spread across the broad expanse of navy, purple-black sky were ribbons of stars, twisting and flaming and spitting bursts of low, shy twilight upon the Earth. Half in darkness, half in light, lands that knew both and stars that, ever fixed, could do naught but burn themselves out and be lost to the dust.

Under an elusive light, the nighttime dark and humid, an angel watched the stars fly. They plunged in flashes, a stroke of white across a stained ebony canvas, before disappearing into the folds of that everlasting horizon.

The humans would choose to call them shooting stars.

The angel watched them for the first time when the Earth was young and fragile. He breathed into the night, a surprising chill contrasting the heat of day. There was no way of knowing, then, that the humans would one day wish upon these stars as they tumbled through the atmosphere and vanished into space stuff in the consuming heat of their passion.

Hands loose at his sides, the angel simply watched them quietly and saw how they fell so fast and lasted so short. He couldn’t see the purpose to such an existence.

He marveled that God would make destruction so beautiful.

***

It was cold, and the meteoroids were falling.

Collected bits of rock and dust journeyed across the black, black sky, particles and atoms releasing and throbbing as they shattered when they neared the Earth’s atmosphere. Something so new, it barely had the opportunity to exist before it was cast down and set ablaze.

There was an eerie beauty in how temporary they were.

A demon walked under the fixed stars, and the meteoroids, and he watched the shadows grow longer until, eventually, there was no light to cast them.

He looked up, then, and watched them fall.

Those chunks of rock and debris would not be lost. They would reform, gradually rebuilding themselves from the remains of what was broken. They could be forged of the remnants of what they once were. No matter how it looked, those shooting bits of light fell fast and burned fast, but they did not disappear entirely.

He did not know humans would one day wish upon these and call them stars. That was fine. Bits of rock were not bound to help him.

Nonetheless, he stood still and stared at the only bits of light that he could see, and he asked God if They knew how much it hurt, to fall from the heavens and break apart.

***

The night was a breath on the day, a lingering touch. Undiscovered impossibility, a shelter in the immediate known. An angel and a demon saw streaking overhead the infinite realm of eternity. However the Earth might change, who they knew and who they loved, the sky would always look like this.

The stars would always change.

The angel turned to the demon who cradled his left hand so gently in his right, as though it was a star itself, as though it had fallen and crashed, and the demon had to keep it safe and warm. He held that hand as though he knew he was the only one who would. The angel held back, a grip more certain than himself, heart beating in a reluctance to believe in anything.

Stars and meteoroids. They flew in the same direction. They were the same, they were different. They were the same.

Humans wish on these, the angel said.

The demon made no reply. They were shadows within shadows. There was light within light, a flame, echoing. What was the point in staying still? Could something more be found in releasing one’s own grasp on the black blanket of night, and allowing the world to overwhelm your assumed, stationary existence? Scars and pictures in the wear, flakes of ash trailing, fading. The collision of trajectories wayward, burning away together until nothing remained to barricade touch.

Neither the angel nor the demon wished for anything.


End file.
